


just to see that smile

by 3amscribbles



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 05:30:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14888540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3amscribbles/pseuds/3amscribbles
Summary: A beach, and a second proposal.





	just to see that smile

Freedom is still a strange state; one that Robert is tentative to move within. He spent so many years dressing himself in suit jackets and the role of a polite young man who charmed everyone he met and pretended to have no hidden motives – played out his cards and hid parts of himself in order to fit in, into families and companies so that he could gain as much as possible and keep it all to himself.

Moving back to Emmerdale didn’t feel like moving home, he never quite got the hang of what a home could be, of what it could mean beyond the pressure to be something better than he was and to act in ways that didn’t feel natural then but that had become instinctual by the time he set foot back in the village again.

Freedom is _strange_. Sand is softer than it looks to be, and Robert wiggles his toes in it unconsciously; sighs at his phone and bites back a string of profanities. New business contacts in Leeds: nothing he wants to deal with right now or act like he cares about when there’s much more important things waiting, undemanding, for him right here on the same stretch of sand.

He locks the phone with its stack of emails, drops the device onto the blanket on the ground next to his feet and doesn’t even watch it fall, doesn’t care if it breaks. Emails can wait, and socks have been discarded and he has rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, has undone several buttons because there is no costume that needs to be worn anymore – nothing to force himself to fit into because he found out two minutes into his return that home means Aaron. Aaron, and the way Robert doesn’t have to halt his own instincts or plan his sentences in advance in order to fit in because he just does. _They_ do. Together.

He was confused earlier, when Aaron packed them into the car and drove. Hated how he couldn’t interpret the twitch of a mischievous smile upon Aaron’s lips after all this time, yet loved it simultaneously because he knows now that he’ll spend the rest of his life watching it, doing his best to coax it out as often as possible, and giving in and getting into the car was the least he was willing to do for it today.

Now, stood on the beach by their discarded belongings, it makes more sense. Aaron stood by the waterline with his jeans rolled up to his ankles and Seb held safely between his wide palms makes sense, makes a beautiful painting highlighted by the setting sun on the horizon, and it doesn’t matter that Aaron hasn’t said a word about where this idea came from. All that matters is that they’re here.

Aaron has been out there with Seb for a good half an hour at this point, while Robert’s attempts to look at the screen instead of his husband and son has failed spectacularly. There are photos on that discarded phone of Aaron walking out towards the ocean with Seb in his arms, of him crouching down in the wet sand and talking animatedly with the boy about the flow and ebb of the water, all of it golden and gleaming and beautiful.

Robert walks towards it, now, because he can. Because freedom is to follow instincts that are _his_ and that gives him a kind of pleasure that he’s never known before, pleasure that all the money in the world could never have competed with, and because he knows that Aaron wants him there.

Aaron is bent forward and holding Seb a mere inch above the surface of the water, now, arms stretched out in front of him and hands tucked in securely under the boy’s armpits. Seb’s kicking about, his feet wet from where Aaron must have let him dip them in the sea, and both of them are radiating joy. Both of them are brighter than the sun that beams back at them, and Robert’s entire chest hurts with how much he loves them, with how forcefully he loses his breath at the sight of them like this.

He rubs a hand over his breastbone, and settles his palm where the thud of his heart is the strongest – doesn’t have to pretend to be itching at the skin beneath his shirt as though none of this matters to him because he doesn’t have to pretend not to feel things these days. Doesn’t have to pin appropriate smiles upon his lips or feelings upon his sleeves because he has rolled those up, now, and can let his emotions tremble all over his expression, squinting against all the brightness with his hand admiring the steady rhythm of his own heart in reaction to it all.

“Don’t think you’ve ever mentioned that you like the beach before,” he ponders aloud, though his voice is soft and the water’s washing up over the sand noisily enough that he’s surprised that Aaron hears it at all.

Aaron looks over at him, though, acknowledging his presence with joy still lining his eyes and mouth. None of it fades when he looks at Robert these days – Robert is no longer a source of ambivalence or doubt, but something that – incredibly – fuels Aaron’s happiness and makes the smile upon his face last longer.

“Not to lie around getting tanned on, I don’t,” Aaron tells him, squinting slightly against the same sunlight while Seb splutters happily at an incoming wave.

“Mum took me here when I was a kid, before – before she left,” he goes on, and the smile actually does lose a bit of brightness for a second, becomes more wistful while his gaze drifts down to Seb’s happy feet as though channelling their emotion and powering himself back up again. “It was the happiest I ever were back then. She let me search every inch of this beach for like… hidden treasures and stuff. Went on for hours. I guess I just – I know that Seb’s too young to remember this, but still. It seems like he likes it, yeah?”

Robert swallows. Smiles when Aaron looks over at him for confirmation.

“It’s the happiest he’s been today, that’s for sure,” he says.

Aaron arches an unimpressed eyebrow. “You get just as grumpy as him when it’s this hot outside and you _know_ it – it’s like you’ve never seen the sun before.”

Summers used to be spent in offices on Robert’s part, before. Used to be centred around goals of money and success that he never realized held little potential of making him happy in the end.

It’s all in the past now, though, switched for a future that speaks of sunlight and beaming smiles with a family that is entirely his. An Aaron who has stripped off his hoodie for once, and who’s already getting sun-kissed upon exposed arms and features – scars exposed to evening sunshine that doesn’t cast shadows over his past, but highlights the way that Aaron has healed. Points out that Robert didn’t lose him, and that Aaron never lost himself.

Robert reaches out to straighten the sunhat on Seb’s head to shield those fascinated eyes from the sun, and breathes out a chuckle in reaction to the squeal of joy that the boy lets out when Aaron crouches down in the sand a moment later. Aaron lowers Seb so that his feet are planted on the bottom of the sea, water just high enough to reach his small ankles, and grins that breathtaking smile again when Seb keeps making pleased noises at his own toes.

Seb _is_ happy, just like Aaron, which makes Robert feel the same way. He lets his gaze roam along the beach for a moment – pictures a younger Aaron running up and down the length of it before he looks back down at the man that the kid became and asks, “So this is where you found the fossil that Chas keeps carrying around with her?”

He admires the wobble of Seb’s legs; how Aaron’s support is unfaltering where his hands keep the child secure on untrained and unbalanced limbs. Though he shifts his gaze to meet Aaron’s when the man turns his head up.

“Mum told you?”

“Not about everything you just said, no, but about the fossil and how you gave it to her. How much it means to her,” he explains, tilting his own head slightly. “We’ve gotten better at that whole _talking_ thing.”

Aaron huffs out a soft chuckle, shaking his head a little and turning his attention back to Seb. For a while they’re just playing; Aaron settling Seb on his knee and stretching a hand down to the water to splash and make movements that Seb can track with his gaze, Seb reaching a hand up behind his own head to touch at Aaron’s jaw when it moves with Aaron’s chatter about what they’re seeing.

If Liv hadn’t opted for an evening in with Gabby instead of this, it would be the very perfect picture. Something Robert would want to stay in forever.

“We’ll be that, soon. Fossils. Old and grey.”

Aaron stands up at that, pressing Seb’s back to his own chest and keeping him secure there while his own gaze locks with Robert’s once more. Both his eyebrows are tilting inwards to top off an offended expression, though sarcasm soon drifts into his eyes and taints his voice when he counters with, “Speak for yourself, granddad. I haven’t even hit thirty yet.”

Robert shakes his head, smiling. “No, I _want_ to be – that’s the point. Old and grey and granddads in the future, with you.”

Aaron smiles bashfully at that, soft and beautiful and ever so visibly affected by Robert’s declarations of love, however small they may be at times, and it reminds Robert of how this kind of freedom – of _happiness_ – is new for Aaron, too. How walls have been up and weight have been worn for years, even since Robert came into Aaron’s life, and how they’re both roaming free together now, searching for treasures they’d never thought they’d find in their separate lives.

“It’s a good thing we’re already on our way there, then, isn’t it?”

The future lies in his smile and voice, in the way he looks at Robert as though he sees the exact same things for them down the line, and Robert is so in love with him. With every side of this man that he has gotten to see when no one else has even looked in the right direction. He’s in love and he’s in deep and he’s in for the long run. The forever kind. The eternal way that the rings that they are wearing should reflect, once and for all.

“Aaron,” he blurts, surprisingly soft considering the weight of his heart in it, in that name. “Will you marry me again? You know – make it legal? Do it right this time, all of it. A honeymoon on a beach somewhere where you can… I don’t know, dig up an entire dinosaur or something?”

Aaron beams brightly again, bouncing himself and Seb slightly in the sand where he rocks back and forth on the soles of his feet. The sky’s getting orange, the water feels warm across Robert’s toes. Everything is stunning.

“Is _that_ what you want to do when we finally go on our honeymoon?” Aaron asks. “Watch me dig for bones?”

Robert blinks, for the first time in his life bypassing the chance to smirk and say something suggestive in favour of admitting; “If it’ll make you happy, yeah.”

A moment passes where they simply watch each other over Seb’s head, then Aaron’s free hand shoots out between them and fists the front of Robert’s shirt, tugging him in close enough to press a swift kiss to Robert’s lips.

When Aaron’s leaning back again he stops a mere inch away, lingering there as he says, “ _You_ make me happy.”

Robert blinks some more, amazed. “I do.”

“You do,” Aaron reaffirms, then adds, “I love you.”

“I—“ Robert starts, then catches himself, suddenly wide-eyed. “I don’t have any rings.”

Aaron’s expression turns judgmental at once, amusement lining his eyes. “We have rings, you see.”

“Not new ones!” Robert reminds him. “This is a terrible proposal. _Again_.”

Aaron shakes his head, looking fond despite an obvious attempt not to where he hides his growing grin against the top of Seb’s head and closes his eyes for a moment. The fingers that he’s had buried along the row of buttons on Robert’s shirt slip down to his own hip eventually, digging into a front pocket of his jeans while his other hand hoists the baby up higher against his chest.

“Here,” he says, extracting something from his jeans and offering his closed fist to Robert. “Not a ring, but the best I can do for now.”

It’s Robert’s turn to furrow eyebrows this time, slowly opening his hand palm up beneath Aaron’s fist to accept whatever it is Aaron is giving him – whatever he may have had in his pocket until now.

A shell falls the couple of inches between their hands when Aaron unfolds his, small-looking where it lands in the centre of Robert’s palm. Robert looks at it for seconds upon seconds, watched in turn by the sun and Aaron as time ticks by.

“You found this now?” he asks eventually, once words finally start to appear in his mind again and looking up at Aaron seems somewhat safe, somewhat less like something that’ll make him burst into tears because if it’s true – if Aaron has just found the shell on the beach this evening – then there’s a bigger meaning behind this gift than Robert can put words on.

“Your son and I did,” Aaron nods, turning Seb around and smiling at him as he speaks, communicating silently of their recent adventure. “I figured it’d be a good memory of this day – something to talk about later on with him. I suppose it only got better now, though, if you want it.”

“Our son,” Robert murmurs reflexively to the shell in his hand, the way his mind has done for months in silence at every mention of Seb and Aaron in the same sentence. Bigger meaning, indeed. Huge. Aaron taking a part of his happiest times and giving it away like a piece of himself, and Robert being one out of two people that get the honour of having that, of keeping it safe. “I want everything with you.”

When he finally looks up again, it’s to the sight of Aaron with tears in his eyes and a new smile pressed to the top of Seb’s head – Seb blinking drowsily over a firm shoulder and the sunlight embracing the entire scene.

It’s still not brighter than Aaron is, though. Nothing can be.


End file.
